Just 7 percent of respondents in the July Gallup poll mentioned Ã¢â‚¬Å“natural disaster response/reliefÃ¢â‚¬  as the most important problem facing the country, a significant drop from 18 percent in June (in May just 1 percent said natural disaster relief was the top problem).

Ã‚ The Fix blog puts its money on the former, observing that Ã¢â‚¬Å“the wall-to-wall coverage of the spill (as symbolized by the ever-present Ã¢â‚¬Å“spill camÃ¢â‚¬ ) has effectively dulled the publicÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s outrage about the spill.Ã¢â‚¬ 

ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s an interesting point. Is our attention span in the wake of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history this short?

Yet while discussion of the oil spill on Twitter, Google, blogs and YouTube overall has dropped off, Mashable did find that local residents are still searching for information about the disaster.

Not surprisingly, Louisiana residents are still searching for Ã¢â‚¬Å“oil spillÃ¢â‚¬  on Google, as are the residents of many other Gulf Coast areas. New Orleans-area Google users are by far the largest geographical group still looking for information.

We’d hazard a guess that a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico could reawaken interest in the oil spill.

One thought on “Gallup: Waning Interest in Disaster Relief and Oil Spill”

It’s a shame that the public interest is starting to wane on this issue. I really feel for the people affected. I just recently saw a documentary on the Exxon-Valdez spill about how a whole town has been wiped out by the accident, and how decades later people are still trying to put their lives together.